U.S. Patent Publication No. 2008/014118 discloses a sample processing apparatus for suctioning a sample from a sample container held by a sample rack and processing the suctioned sample. Such a sample processing apparatus is equipped with a transport device for transporting a sample rack holding sample containers to a suctioning position. The sample rack holding a plurality of sample containers is set in a rack set region on the transport device. The sample rack thus set in the rack set region is transported by the transport device toward the suctioning position in front of a measurement device so that the sample containers housed in the sample rack are one by one placed at the suctioning position. During the transport of the sample rack to the suctioning position, barcodes affixed to all of the sample containers housed in the sample rack are read by a barcode reader. After the samples in all of the sample containers housed in the sample rack are suctioned, the sample rack is transported to a rack placement region on the transport device.
Such a sample processing apparatus temporarily stops the transport operation of the sample rack when a predetermined transport suspension event has occurred during the transport operation of the sample rack. In this case, a user returns the sample rack from a position where the transport operation was suspended to the rack set region before restarting the transport operation of the sample rack.
The conventional sample processing apparatus, however, imposes an additional burden on the user because the user always has to return the sample rack to the rack set region to restart the transport operation.